Prop. 13 poll: Nearly half of voters open to changing it

SACRAMENTO -- Proposition 13's restrictions on property tax growth have been untouchable in California politics for almost 40 years, but a new Field Poll shows about half of voters are open to tweaking the landmark measure.

Asked in a general way if they favor making some changes, 49 percent of registered voters said they supported the idea, while 34 percent are opposed, the poll found.

Deciding how to alter California's rigid tax rules is the multimillion-dollar question. The Field Poll found far less consensus around a proposal to reduce the threshold needed to boost local taxes from a two-thirds majority to 55 percent. Only 39 percent of voters said they support that idea, and Republicans are strongly opposed, with 67 percent disapproving.

"Proposition 13 is not as sacrosanct as it had been in the past," said Carl Stempel, a California State University East Bay professor who helped write the poll. "California has so many more younger voters today, and they don't have the same historical memory as the older generation."

Prop 13 enshrined an anti-tax mentality in California law when it passed with 65 percent of the vote in 1978, slashing property taxes and limiting the ability of politicians and even voters to raise taxes of all types. Advocates say it has helped keep California affordable for residents and businesses, but critics say it has starved government for money, leading in particular to a decline in the quality of the state's schools.

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In recent years more than half a dozen plans to alter Proposition 13 in some way have all failed, in part because of strong opposition in the business community and advocacy groups like the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. Jon Coupal, the group's president, said keeping property taxes low for businesses is important because higher levies always "hit the pocketbooks of consumers and tenants," too.

In February, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano introduced a bill to close what he calls a loophole in state law that allows commercial property buyers who take a less than 50 percent stake in the ownership to avoid having the property reassessed at market rate. Under his bill, any sale, no matter how many new owners are involved, would trigger reassessment and a higher tax.

A decade ago, wine company E&J Gallo avoided a higher reassessment in buying a 1,765-acre Napa County vineyard when a dozen Gallo family members bought shares of the property -- none greater than 50 percent. The move costs Napa County at least $700,000 a year in lost property taxes.

In one interesting example of consensus, the poll found a strong majority of both Democrats and Republicans support changing Proposition 13 to force business properties, just like houses, to be reassessed when they are sold. More than 7 in 10 Democrats (71 percent) and nearly two in three Republicans (64 percent) reported supporting such a change, similar to the one Ammiano hopes to enact this year.

However, those number may be inflated because of confusion about the poll question, political analysts said. San Jose State University Professor Larry Gerston said voters unfamiliar with the nuances of Proposition 13 may have thought they were being asked about proposals to create what's known as a split roll, where commercial property owners are taxed at a higher rate than residential property owners.

"It's the first time in memory we've seen voters want to do anything about Prop 13, but I don't know if they realized how this poll question was formatted," Gerston said.

Despite voters' interest in some changes, the poll also found that knowledge of the measure, a part of the state constitution, varies.

Fewer than half said they knew the measure's rules apply to both residential and commercial properties. But close to 70 percent of voters said they know that more recent homeowners living in similar homes in the same neighborhood generally pay higher property taxes than longtime homeowners.

The survey was conducted between March 18 and April 5 among 1,000 registered voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.